“Sister?” I managed. “She’s the one you mentioned to me? The one created at the same time as you?”
She glanced at me and nodded. “That’s right. We were like sisters. But there was something missing with Marissa. A lack of joy. Her depression only grew. It caused her to rebel against orders she was given. Finally, she’d done too much damage to be forgiven. They burned a soul into her and sent her to the human world. It wasn’t all that long ago.”
“Forever,” the angel whispered through Bishop’s lips.
“No, not forever.” Cassandra’s beautiful face was etched with sorrow. “Oh, Marissa. Why are you hurting people? Can’t you stop?”
“The more I take, the more I want—but there’s no end to it. Please help me, Cassandra. Help me.”
“I will help you.” Cassandra approached Bishop.
“What are you doing?” Roth growled at her, catching her hand.
“What I was sent here to do.” She glanced over her shoulder at him before she pulled her hand from his grip, her expression filled with both regret and determination. “My mission.”
She reached out and touched Bishop’s arm.
Chapter 28
I nearly screamed. Cassandra didn’t know what that meant. She didn’t know a touch was what transferred Marissa to a new victim.
Or...maybe she did know.
The transfer happened with a violent gasp from Cassandra, and Bishop fell to his knees. When he looked up, his blue eyes were clear again.
Cassandra’s were now glazed.
“Cassie!” Roth reached toward her, but she stepped out of his reach.
She shook her head and held up her hands to stop him from getting any closer. “No, Roth. I have to do this. I have to control her. Only I can. She trusts me. Don’t you, Marissa? You know I want the best for you.” She smiled. “I can hear her in my head. She feels better now.”
“I have a plan,” I blurted out, knowing I had to do something, say something. “If you can hold on to her long enough...and if we can find Stephen, then maybe...I—I honestly believe he’s not completely evil. He still loves Jordan. He could help us. He could use his hunger for good this time—and it wouldn’t kill you since you’re an angel.”
To the left, the police were supervising the breakup of the party. All the kids, still in costume, were scattering. Running past us, but not even looking at us.
“Cassandra, no!” Bishop suddenly roared.
My head whipped in her direction to see that she now had Bishop’s golden dagger out of its sheath and clutched in her right hand.
“Cassandra!” I managed. “What are you doing?”
“Stay back,” she said as we all collectively took a step toward her.
I exchanged a panicked look with Bishop. His face was tense, his expression strained.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing with that?” Roth growled.
“You approved this plan, Roth,” she said through gritted teeth. “Remember?”
Clarity sparked in his gaze. “This is different.”
Tears streaked down her cheeks. “It’s not. This was the plan all along. I knew it might come to this—worst-case scenario, but unavoidable. I hoped I’d find another way, but I now see there isn’t one. I can’t let her hurt anyone else. I’m sorry.”
Roth’s eyes widened. “Don’t do this. Please.”
A small smile played at her lips. “I would have liked more time here, with you, but—” she swallowed hard “—there’s no other way this can end.”
She didn’t wait another second. She thrust the dagger into her chest—a horrible mirror image of what Zach had done. Only Cassandra did this of her own free will.
“No!” Another scream tore from my throat.
“Cassie!” Roth lunged toward her to grab the knife, but it was too late. She yanked it out and threw it to the side just before she fell to her knees, her expression filled with pain. He collapsed right in front of her, grabbing hold of her shoulders. “What have you done? Why would you do this?”
Anything else he said was swept away by the Hollow as it opened wide.
“I’m sorry, Roth,” she whispered. “Forgive me.”
She kissed him a moment before the Hollow reached for her and yanked her back into its wide vortex of a mouth, right out of Roth’s arms.
Roth shoved himself back up to his feet and stared at the vortex as if stunned and transfixed. “She isn’t dead.” His voice broke. “Not yet...she was still breathing!”
“Bishop—do something! He’s going to—” But I couldn’t finish my sentence in time.
Roth began to run toward the Hollow as if ready to jump in after Cassandra.
Bishop grabbed for him and yanked him back just in time. Roth turned around and slammed his fist into Bishop’s face.
“Let go of me! I have to save her!”
“No!” Bishop yelled back at him. “We can’t lose you, too.”
Roth struggled hard, but Kraven was also there to help restrain him, and Connor, too. It took the three of them to pull the demon back from the Hollow.
A few horrible moments later, the vortex closed and silence fell.
Cassandra was gone. She’d saved the city from the bodiless angel. Her sister. And the full truth about her real mission was one that broke my heart.
It was a suicide mission from the moment she arrived—and she’d known it all along.
Roth believed she was still alive when the Hollow took her, but I’d seen that dagger. The Hallowed Blade—the only weapon capable of killing an angel or a demon—hadn’t missed her heart. She was dead.
Roth fell silent and still. Finally, the others let go of him.
“Roth,” Connor said uneasily. “I’m sorry. I had no idea that you and Cassandra...”
“Shut up.”
“Let’s go get a drink,” Kraven suggested. “A real one. None of this kiddie stuff.”
“No. Leave me alone. All of you.” He turned the darkest glare I’d ever seen on the rest of us.
“You cared for her,” Bishop said. “We all did.”
He scowled. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Stupid angel getting in all of our ways. I’m glad she’s gone.”
Without another word, Roth shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and started walking away.
I didn’t need to read his mind to tell that he was lying. His anguish was written all over his face.
Bishop picked up the dagger from the ground and stared at the blade for a few moments of silence.
“What now?” Connor asked, his voice grim.
“Patrol,” he said simply. “You and Kraven head out. I’ll meet you back at the church later.”
For once, and despite their earlier fight, Kraven didn’t say a word against him. With a last look at me, a thousand questions in his eyes, he followed Connor down the street until they disappeared into the shadows.
I watched them walk away, again wondering what Connor had been talking about before about distractions and games. Who was hiding? What did Connor know?
I felt Bishop take my hand, and the shimmer of electricity between us worked to snap me out of my semidaze. I looked at him, our eyes locking.
“I thought that angel had you,” I whispered. “I thought I was going to lose you, too. At that point, I was okay with it going into somebody else, anybody else, if it meant you’d be all right. But Cassandra...I didn’t want her to die...”
“Me, neither.” His jaw was tight as he squeezed my hand. “Come on, I’ll take you home.”
All I could manage was a nod.
* * *
It was so strange returning home after the events of the past couple days. My familiar house seemed oddly unfamiliar to me. Like the person who once lived here all her life had moved far away. Or died.
There was something waiting for me on the doorstep. A brown envelope. I picked it up to see that my name was written on it with black marker.
I exchanged a tense look with Bishop. “What do you think this is?”
“Open it,” he said.
I tore open the envelope and pulled out the contents: a small, plain, gold locket on a long chain and a note.
“What does it say?” he asked.
It didn’t say much, but what it said stole my breath. I held it out to him so he could read it, too.
Samantha,
This belongs to you. Consider it my payment for helping give me the chance to escape. Be normal again. One of us should get that chance.
—Stephen
Bishop touched the locket in my hand, his gaze rising from the note to mine. “It’s your soul. It’s contained inside this locket.”
I could barely speak. “I helped give him the chance to escape? Did I really do that?”
He shook his head. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t want me to hurt him. You didn’t want me to kill him. I guess he considered that a debt to be repaid.”
Stephen still had Carly’s soul, but was this the proof I was looking for that Stephen wasn’t totally evil now? Or was he a super-gray who liked to have a clean slate to work with?
I stared down at the locket. It was what I’d wanted all this time—to have my soul back. To find some semblance of normalcy in my life again. To escape the supernatural craziness I’d been plunged into as much as I possibly could.
“So I get rewarded after everything and Cassandra has to sacrifice herself? It doesn’t seem fair. Not even close.”
Bishop watched me, studying my face as if looking for clues to some mystery there. “Cassandra knew what she was getting herself into when she arrived. What she did was very brave...and incredibly stupid. I wish she’d told us everything. Together we might have been able to find another way to end this.”
I thought of how she’d felt toward Roth. “She kept secrets. Sometimes secrets are dangerous.”
His gaze sought mine. “Sometimes secrets are necessary.”
“She and Roth were falling for each other.”
“An angel and a demon falling dangerously in love—just like your parents.”
I blinked hard as I thought of how they’d ended—nearly exactly the same as Roth and Cassandra, but nobody had been there to hold Nathan back from following Anna into the Hollow. “Would you have tried to keep them apart if you’d known earlier?”
“Oh, I already knew.” At my look, the barest glimpse of a smile played at his lips. “The way they started looking at each other...well, it was obvious.”
I let out a shaky breath. “They would have been torn apart if others found out—just like my parents were.”
“Maybe,” he allowed. “Or maybe the all-important balance can have some exceptions to the rule. Maybe what happened with Cassandra and Roth—with your parents—needs to happen a few more times before those barriers can start to be broken down.”
My head swam as I thought about that, about barriers breaking down, and I stared at the locket for another moment. Then my gaze shot to his. “You are kind of brilliant, do you know that?”
He cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
My heart pounded. “Incredibly brilliant! The barrier. It can be broken. Julie was right. I can help her and the others.”
He turned me to face him, his expression confused. “What are you talking about, Samantha?”
I slipped the locket into the pocket of my jeans and grabbed his hand. “We need to go back to that house.”
“The party’s over. It got raided, remember?”
“I know, but—my mother told me it was haunted. That’s why she couldn’t sell it. Well, she was right. It is haunted. And all those ghosts—those trapped souls—I think I know how I can help them.”
Chapter 29
We took my mother’s car back to the east side of the city to where Noah’s Halloween party had been held. The house was now empty, litter scattered over the front lawn.
I glanced down the street toward the exact spot where Cassandra had been taken away. In the beginning, I’d had so many conflicting feelings about the angel, but now all I could remember was how much she loved Chinese food and the red goo.
“You probably think I’m completely crazy right now,” I said to Bishop as we got out of the car and walked a block down the street to where I could see the barrier. In most spots it was invisible, but here and there it showed itself as a translucent silver mesh that stretched up over the city like an opalescent bubble.
Bishop looked up at the barrier, his arms crossed over his chest. He then sent a wry look in my direction. “Completely? No. But maybe a little. It’s okay, though. I could use the company.”
I held my hand out to him. “I need your dagger.”
He eyed my outstretched hand, studying me as if trying to figure out a riddle. Clarity shone in his blue eyes. “Now I do think you’re crazy.”
“I have to try.”
Bishop hesitated another moment before he finally nodded. “Don’t just try.”
He pulled out the dagger and handed it to me hilt first. It felt heavy in my hand—and not just its weight. This knife had killed Cassandra, Zach and countless others.
A similar dagger had killed my birth mother seventeen years ago.
With whatever supernatural abilities I had with being a nexus—the same power that allowed me to read the minds of angels and demons—I could also read this dagger’s energy, which hummed up my arm. This wasn’t just metal. It was magic.
It felt similar to the imprint of wings on the backs of the angels and demons. This was not of this world. Here it looked like a dagger, but it was so much more than that.
This, most definitely, was a physical representation of death itself.
But I didn’t want to kill anyone with it. Tonight, I wanted to help them.
Bishop already knew what I was going to attempt. He’d heard my aunt demand it of me—and then tortured him to push me to do it. It was one of the many reasons Bishop believed nobody should learn about my secret identity.
Because I might be able to do things like this.
With both hands, I brought the blade up to the surface of the barrier. I glanced at Bishop.
“Concentrate,” he said, nodding. His eyes glowed blue in the darkness surrounding us. “You can do it.”
I took a deep breath and returned my attention to the barrier, to the also now-glowing dagger, and brought the weapon downward in one slice. A shimmering line of golden light appeared where I’d made the cut. It gaped open and a whoosh of warm air blew my hair back from my face.
“It worked,” I whispered. The golden light grew brighter and brighter, sparking with fireworklike intensity. Bishop drew me back, his arm around me as we stared up at the breached barrier.
My aunt was right. I could do this.
The thought both excited me, and scared the hell out of me.
Here, close to this kind of magic, created with the powers of
both Heaven and Hell, I could feel the ghosts. I wasn’t clairvoyant—or whatever Jordan really was. But I knew when the spirits sensed the opening in the barrier. I felt them move past us like a cool breeze. I felt their joy at being free.
“Do you feel it?” I whispered.
“Yes. I feel it.” His arm tightened at my waist, his attention fixed on the barrier itself.
Everyone who’d died in the city since the barrier had been put in place—they’d all been trapped. They’d gathered in the abandoned house, waiting for the time that they could escape. That time was now.
I turned to look at him as something very important occurred to me. “Could you leave, too? You could go right now. Out of the city, away from the barrier...Heaven could pull you back. Could heal you.”
He studied the torn barrier, the edges glowing with visible light. “It’s not that easy for me now.”
“Why not?”
“The mission’s not over yet and I know I won’t even be on their radar again until it is. With this soul in me, I’m basically invisible to Heaven. So I’m not leaving—not this city, not this problem and not you.” When I opened my mouth to argue, his gaze grew tense. “No arguing. My decision isn’t going to change. Got it? I’m not going anywhere till this is over.”
I blew out a breath. “Stubborn.”
“Remind you of anyone?”
“Yeah, your older brother.”
He snorted at that before his expression shifted to one that was more wary. “You can’t tell anyone about this.”
“Kraven already knows what I am.”
“He doesn’t know this. This is our secret. Promise me you won’t tell him.”
“One more secret?”
“It’s important.”
I nodded, my throat tight. “Fine. I promise.”
We kept watching until the cut in the barrier resealed itself a minute later. The souls had been released to find their way to the afterlife.
Wicked Kiss Page 32
